A beautiful story about Gwen Barzay, a black woman who broke both racial and gender barriers to become an early computer programmer. "Today she is retired, and like most retirees, she asks her son to help her with computers. She likes her Mac and runs a small business buying and selling books on line. What does she have to say about the difficulties she faced breaking into a male-dominated industry? 'I had it easy. The computer didn't care that I was a woman or that I was black. Most women had it much harder.'" The computer didn't care. Beautifully put.

It's been said that to be a great engineer you need to have a slight streak of autism inside, somewhat indifferent to people and feelings. When I first heard of that I and others were annoyed, but I eventually came to accept it.

Autism in boys runs 5 times that of girls, so a much lighter version probably follows.

As it stands, I have only ever worked with female engineers in large companies like Motorola who go out of their way to hire them, they have to meet affirmative hiring laws. In every smaller company, zippo.

Anyway any female engineer could probably have her pick of companies to work for. I wonder where my robot/rocket daughter will end up, NASA we hope but not in space.